I have some very exciting news for reviewers, book bloggers, librarians, booksellers and fellow psychological-thriller lovers:
The Harrogate Spa Murders is now available to request on NetGalley.
This is your opportunity to enter The Thorne Spa early, meet its eight secretive guests and discover why only six of them will leave alive.
The digital review copy is currently available through NetGalley until 16 August 2026.
Welcome to The Thorne Spa
In the heart of Harrogate, The Thorne Spa promises silence, luxury and its famous Three Heat Journey.
It is the kind of place where guests surrender their phones, change into identical robes and leave the outside world behind. Every detail has been designed to make them feel safe, pampered and entirely removed from ordinary life.
For Chloe Summers, it should be the perfect escape, even if spending the day with her immaculate, impossible mother already feels like punishment.
But Chloe is not the only guest hiding discomfort behind a robe and a polite smile.
A nervous man watches the exits.
A glamorous wife trembles beside her powerful husband.
A first date is not quite a first date.
And written on the spa walls is a promise that feels less soothing by the hour:
Restore what the world has taken.
By the end of the day, two guests will be dead, every lie will begin to surface, and Chloe will realise that the most dangerous thing inside The Thorne Spa is not the heat.
It is the truth someone has killed to keep buried.
A locked-room psychological thriller with a luxurious twist
I have always loved stories that bring a small group of characters together inside a confined setting and then slowly reveal that none of them is quite who they first appeared to be.
A luxury spa seemed like the perfect place to explore that idea.
The guests have willingly handed over their phones. They are dressed alike. They are moving through a carefully controlled sequence of rooms, surrounded by heat, steam and locked staff doors. The atmosphere is designed to calm them, but it also separates them from the outside world.
Once something goes wrong, the same environment that promised sanctuary begins to feel like a trap.
The Harrogate Spa Murders unfolds over the course of a single day and combines a locked-room mystery with psychological suspense, complicated relationships and secrets that someone is desperate to keep buried.
Expect suspicion, shifting loyalties, polished appearances and several people with very good reasons not to tell the truth.
Harrogate made me do it
They took my phone away.
The idea for this book came during my visit last year to Harrogate and its beautiful Turkish Baths. Before the treatment began, I was asked to surrender my phone for two entire hours.
As a perfectly normal adult with a perfectly normal phone addiction, I was immediately terrified.
What was I supposed to do with all that uninterrupted time?
Apparently, the answer was to plan two murders.
Fictionally, of course.
By the time I left, the earliest pieces of The Harrogate Spa Murders had begun to form. Harrogate gave me the setting, the atmosphere and the inspiration. My slightly overactive imagination did the rest.
What began as a mischievous idea during two phone-free hours gradually became an entire psychological thriller, complete with eight guests, two deaths and a spa filled with secrets.
Now, almost exactly one year later, I will be returning to Harrogate with the finished book in my hands.
Who can request the book on NetGalley?
NetGalley connects authors and publishers with reviewers and book-industry professionals who discover new titles and share them with their audiences and communities. Its members include reviewers, librarians, booksellers, educators, journalists, media professionals and people working within the book trade.
You may be a good fit for The Harrogate Spa Murders if you:
- review psychological thrillers, crime fiction or murder mysteries
- share book recommendations on a blog, Goodreads or social media
- create Bookstagram, BookTok or YouTube content
- work as a librarian, bookseller, journalist or book-trade professional
- enjoy supporting independent authors and discovering new releases
- love confined settings, unreliable characters and stories in which everyone has something to hide
NetGalley members can visit the book’s listing, sign in and submit a request for the digital review copy. Requests are reviewed before access is granted.
What can NetGalley readers expect?
At its heart, The Harrogate Spa Murders is a tense, character-driven mystery about what happens when old guilt is brought into a sealed environment and placed under pressure.
The story includes:
A luxury setting with a darker edge
The Thorne Spa promises calm, privacy and escape from the outside world. But once unease begins to settle over the heat rooms and quiet corridors, luxury no longer feels quite so reassuring.
A cast of guests with something to hide
Behind the identical robes and polite conversation are complicated relationships, private fears and carefully maintained appearances. Not everyone has come to the spa for the reason they claim.
Rising suspicion
Small details begin to feel significant. Conversations take on new meanings. Trust becomes increasingly difficult when no one is willing to reveal everything they know.
Shifting perspectives and partial truths
The story moves between selected characters, offering different glimpses of the same unsettling day.
A claustrophobic atmosphere
With phones surrendered and the outside world held at a distance, The Thorne Spa becomes its own enclosed world of steam, silence and growing tension.
Psychological suspense with a locked-room feel
Readers who enjoy confined settings, hidden motives, unreliable impressions and mysteries driven by character will feel at home inside The Thorne Spa.
A one-day timeline
The confined timeframe keeps the pressure rising as the spa becomes increasingly tense, dangerous and difficult to escape.
Why NetGalley reviews matter
Every request, recommendation and review helps a new book reach the readers who are most likely to enjoy it.
For an independent author, early feedback is particularly valuable. Reviews help create visibility, introduce the book to crime-fiction communities and give future readers an honest sense of the experience waiting for them inside the story.
There is never any expectation that every reader will respond to a book in the same way. Thoughtful, honest feedback is what makes the process meaningful.
The launch is almost here
The ebook edition of The Harrogate Spa Murders will be released on 19 July 2026.
The official book launch will follow on Saturday 25 July, during the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate.
I genuinely cannot imagine a more fitting place to celebrate a murder mystery inspired by Harrogate, set in Harrogate and partly conceived while I was separated from my phone inside the city’s Turkish Baths.
Seeing the book listed on NetGalley makes the launch feel even more real. After months of rewriting, editing and preparing the final editions, the doors to The Thorne Spa are finally opening to readers.
Request The Harrogate Spa Murders on NetGalley
The Harrogate Spa Murders is currently available to request as a digital review copy on NetGalley.
The listing is scheduled to remain available until 16 August 2026, so please submit your request while the title is active.
Eight guests enter The Thorne Spa. Six will leave alive.
Are you ready to discover which two do not?
Thank you so much to every reviewer, reader, librarian, bookseller and bookish content creator who requests, reads or shares the book. Your support gives independent stories the chance to travel much further than their authors could ever take them alone.
I cannot wait to welcome you inside The Thorne Spa.
Happy reading!
Until next time,
Mona W. Gloss
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